'—And He Built a Crooked House—' is a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

by American writer

Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein ( ; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific acc ...

, first published in ''

Astounding Science Fiction ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William C ...

'' in February 1941. It was reprinted in the anthology '' Fantasia Mathematica'' (Clifton Fadiman, ed.) in 1958, and in the Heinlein collections '' The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag'' in 1959 and ''The Best of Robert Heinlein'' in 1973. The story is about a mathematically inclined architect named Quintus Teal who has what he thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs by building a house shaped like the unfolded net of a

tesseract In geometry, a tesseract or 4-cube is a four-dimensional hypercube, analogous to a two-dimensional square and a three-dimensional cube. Just as the perimeter of the square consists of four edges and the surface of the cube consists of six ...

. The title is paraphrased from the nursery rhyme " There Was a Crooked Man".

Plot summary

Quintus Teal, a "Graduate Architect" in the

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

area, wants architects to be inspired by

topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...

and the

Picard–Vessiot theory In differential algebra, Picard–Vessiot theory is the study of the differential field extension generated by the solutions of a linear differential equation, using the differential Galois group of the field extension. A major goal is to descri ...

. During a conversation with friend Homer Bailey he shows models made of toothpicks and clay, representing projections of a

four-dimensional Four-dimensional space (4D) is the mathematical extension of the concept of three-dimensional space (3D). Three-dimensional space is the simplest possible abstraction of the observation that one needs only three numbers, called ''dimensions'' ...

, the equivalent of a cube, and convinces Bailey to build one. The house is quickly constructed in an "inverted double cross" shape (having eight cubical rooms, arranged as a stack of four cubes with a further four cubes surrounding the second cube up on the stack). The night before Teal is to show Bailey and his wife, Matilda, around the house, an earthquake occurs. The three of them arrive the next morning to find what appears to be just a single cubical room. Inside, they find the upper floors completely intact, but the stairs seem to form a closed loop. As all the doors and windows lead directly into other spaces, there seems to be no way to get back out. At one point, they look down a hallway and are shocked to see their own backs. Teal realizes that the earthquake caused the house to fold into an actual tesseract. In attempting to move from one room to another by way of a

French window A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a ''doorway'' or ''portal''. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide securit ...

, Teal falls outside and lands in shrubbery. Exploring further, they find that the windows of the original top room do not connect where they mathematically "should". One gives a dizzying view from above the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story, Art Deco-style supertall skyscraper in the Midtown South neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its n ...

, another an upside-down view of a seascape. A third window looks out on a place of no-space, with no color, not even black. The fourth window looks out on an unearthly desert scene. Just then another earthquake hits, and so they exit in a panic through the open window. They find themselves in a desert with twisted, tree-like vegetation around them, with no sign of the house or the window they just jumped through. At first they fear that they might be on another planet. They are relieved when they discover, from a passing truck driver, that they are in

Joshua Tree National Park Joshua Tree National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, US National Park located in southeastern California, straddling north-central Riverside County, California, Riverside County and part of southern San Bernardino County, ...

(referred to by the driver as Joshua Tree National Forest). Returning to the house, they find it has vanished. Teal remarks that it must've "fell through into another section of space" on the last earthquake, and that he should've "anchored it at the foundations". The story ends with Teal rejoicing that he's now got a "great new revolutionary idea for a house", and Mr. Bailey attempting to punch him out of frustration, which Teal quickly evades, as "he was always a man of action".

Address

The story gives Quintus Teal's address as 8775 Lookout Mountain Avenue in Hollywood (), across the street from "the Hermit, the original Hermit of Hollywood". That address is across the street from Heinlein's own house at the time the story was written.Asimov, I. (1971) ''Where Do We Go From Here?'' Greenwich: Fawcett Crest, p. 116

Reception

Stating that it "was, for many readers, the first introduction to four-dimensional geometry that held any promise of comprehensibility",

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including e ...

in 1978 listed "—And He Built a Crooked House—" as an example of how science fiction "can convey bits and pieces, hints and phrases, of knowledge unknown or inaccessible to the reader".

Notes

References

External links

*
—And He Built a Crooked House—
on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...